Israeli War of Independence:The Battle For Gush Etzion

(1947 - 1948)

Some 20 kilometers from Jerusalem,
topping high hills between Bethlehem and Hebron and
amid numerous Arab villages, were the four kibbutzim of Gush
Etzion.
The target of attack from the beginning of
the campaign, they were reinforced by Haganah and Palmah combatants. Arab attack forces numbered as
many as a thousand people at times, and
the situation deteriorated. The armed convoys
of food, petrol and equipment headed for
the Etzion Bloc drew fire and suffered casualties.

On January 15, 1948, 35 Haganah members
under the command of Danny Mas made their
way on foot from Har Tuv (near Beit Shemesh)
to resupply Gush
Etzion, but
there were not enough hours of darkness to
get them to their destination. Arab shepherds
from Tzurif spotted them at dawn and summoned
a large group of armed locals to block their
way. The battle lasted all the next day and
the soldiers fought to the last bullet until
the last of the group
was killed at about 4:30 p.m. The Arab attackers
mutilated the bodies of “the 35.” A
British soldier who took pictures of the
mutilated bodies of the “Lamed Hey convoy” and left his roll of film to be developed
in Jerusalem and never came back for it.
Several decades later the negatives were
discovered, but it was decided not to publish
the atrocities.

On
May 12, 1948, two days before
the proclamation of the State of Israel,
thousands of Arabs and Arab Legionnaires
attacked the Etzion Bloc. The fighting
went on for three long days, and 30 defenders
were killed. On Friday, the day that the
state was proclaimed, they could no longer
hold out. They surrendered. In the massacre
of Kfar Etzion, the Arabs murdered 127
men and women. Bodies lay in the fields for
a year-and-a-half, until Transjordan allowed
Israel to retrieve the corpses and bury
them at Mount
Herzl. The remainder
were taken prisoner to Transjordan.
The four kibbutzim were totally destroyed.
Two hundred and forty settlers, Haganah
and Palmah fighters were killed at the
Etzion Bloc during five-and-a-half months
of war.

Nineteen years later, in the Six-Day War, the Israel
Defense Forces recaptured the area, the settlements were rebuilt
and new ones added. For half a year the battles of the four Etzion
Bloc kibbutzim on JNF land,
20 kilometers from Jerusalem,
preoccupied large Arab forces from all over the Hebron Mountains - forces
that consequently were unable to turn their attention to Jerusalem and
join the battles against
the city's Jews. The battles of the Etzion Bloc thus helped save Jewish
Jerusalem.